This is my summary of Nathaniel Schutta’s “Making web apps suck less”, a session I attended at ScanDevConf 2010. Please understand that, except for the notes at the top and bottom, this post reflects the opinions of the speaker, not me.

[various examples and illustrations of bad usability]

What does usability include in web apps?

• Learnability
• Efficiency
• Memorability – how easy is it to pick up an application again after a few months’ absence
• Handling errors
• User satisfaction

How much should you focus on each of these? As usual in software development, the answer is “It depends”.

• How many users will the system have?
• How often will they use it?
• Will they get training?
• Do they have alternatives to using your application?

How do you find usability problems?

• Ask users
• Watch them
• Try doing it yourself
• Just as comments are a code smell, (the need for) documentation is a usability smell. Warning signs include post-its stuck to the screen, looking things up in the manual.

Paper prototyping is a powerful tool for evaluating usability. Test them with actual users!

My opinion: A good intro for those who have never given usability much thought. Luckily we’ve come a bit further than this with our application.